Sometime later in the evening...
Nina and Eve were at the Staples estate, where Shelby had brought them moments ago after arriving at the Fuller family home.
Nina had found it strange when her teacher had shown up on her doorstep earlier that evening. But after hearing from Eve that Vice would be busy for the night and that he had authorized her to come to her teacher's house, she had easily accepted the situation.
As smart as she was, Nina was still a child. She was naturally happy when she had the opportunity to spend the night with one of the people she loved most outside of her family.
After arriving at the estate earlier, she had played with her teacher and then had dinner.
Now, she was looking at Shelby's library while Eve and the local noblewoman sat around a table in the study area of her residence.
They watched Nina flip through the books while drinking tea and talking in low voices, even though Nina was deaf.
"Have you heard from Vicente?" Eve asked when she saw that Nina wasn't looking at her.
"No. All I know is that the Mazzanti family outpost was attacked earlier, and several of the men in his party are wounded or dead.
Though they eliminated most of the intruders, some of them caused havoc in that place." Shelby said what she already knew after sending Molly out to look for information about that night's incident.
The orange-haired young woman added. "As for him, he's not in town. Where he is and what he's doing, I need more information to get those answers."
Eve heard this and closed her eyes, feeling a little scared.
Their plans didn't include this situation today!
With things happening out of their group's control, this woman couldn't help but worry.
"But stay calm," Shelby told the blonde in front of her. "No one seems to have noticed his connection to Cesar. If something like that had happened, we would have been attacked by now." She looked at Nina, who Vicente's enemies would surely use to target him if they knew who he was.
"If that's the case, he could return with his Vice identity. That will buy us some time before things reach their limit." Eve commented with a sigh, as they hadn't lost all their advantages yet.
...
After more than three hours since the confrontation between Vicente and the three groups earlier, one of the smaller groups that had split up to find him had finally caught up with his tracks.
In this group were three army soldiers, including Nova!
"Captain, what should we do? That damned Cesar can't be far from us." One of the two men beside the beautiful Nova asked.
After the death of the leader of the group of soldiers, she became the leader of this battalion, of which she was the deputy.
Nova realized that Cesar couldn't have faked those signs and was certainly close to her group. She narrowed her eyes and said. "Warn the other groups in the area. We'll continue to follow these tracks, but we won't do anything until we at least have the help of the other groups."
Nova didn't want to take any chances against Cesar. Although she didn't like how the army acted against him, she saw him as an enemy. Moreover, she didn't underestimate his abilities.
After seeing how Cesar could kill even careless level 4 Acolytes earlier, she wouldn't be foolish to think that only she and those two could handle him.
Besides, the fact that Cesar was always polite to her meant nothing to her. Would he spare her only because of her beauty? She didn't believe it, and she didn't want to be spared for it. She was going to win and arrest him!
The other two saw the determination in this woman's eyes and immediately prepared the communiqués for the groups that had been divided earlier.
Since they all wanted Cesar's head, they had swapped communicators to act together when they found him. So, these two quickly did what they were supposed to do and sent their location to the other groups in The Rocky Gorge.
Meanwhile, Nova kept an eye on the surroundings, worried about reports of magical creatures in the area.
'If there really are basilisks here, they won't be as easy to catch as some of us think...' She thought about how defensive these magical creatures were about their territories.
If they entered the area of influence of a single basilisk, it wouldn't matter who they were. That creature would see them as enemies and act against anyone who stood in its way!
'Is this your plan, Cesar? Are you really willing to risk so much?'
...
A few minutes later, Vicente expected someone to have followed him.
But not knowing who they were, how many of them there were, and where they were, he made his way to the center of the area as fast as he could.
As he did so, Vicente felt the number of magical creatures around him and realized that he was getting closer and closer to the most dangerous place in this region.
There are several 2nd stage magical beings in this area. He narrowed his eyes and saw that he hadn't attracted anyone's attention yet, but he was mapping out the territories of the beings there.
It wasn't difficult to tell where a magical being's territory began and ended. All one needed to know was to estimate the range of those beings' senses.
For example, a 3rd stage basilisk could perfectly sense its surroundings up to 5 kilometers away from it. So its range would be about less than 5 kilometers from it.
But even beings that were defensive about their territory wouldn't look for trouble with weak beings in their domain. Low-level beings were important for the maintenance of the inhabitants, and so on. Therefore, such a being would only see problems in the movements of weaker beings if they got too close.
In the case of the basilisks, that would be 1 to 2 kilometers away. What's more, in normal situations, it wouldn't bother to act unless someone in the third stage was in its domain.
Knowing the limits of the various creatures he had noticed so far, Vicente made his way to the most dangerous area of this place, using the area he knew he could use without getting into trouble.
But this was not an exact science!
The behavior and personality of magical beings also greatly influenced their behavior.
Suddenly, as he was running through the area, Vice saw three 2.5-meter-tall monkeys appear before him, flying from branch to branch in his direction.
